Pointers

Pointers (pointer variables) are special variables that are used to store addresses rather than values.

Pointer Syntax

Here is how we can declare pointers.

int* p;

Here, we have declared a pointer p of int type.

You can also declare pointers in these ways.

int *p1;
int * p2;

Let’s take another example of declaring pointers.

int* p1, p2;

Here, we have declared a pointer p1 and a normal variable p2.

Assigning addresses to Pointers

Let’s take an example.

int* pc, c;
c = 5;
pc = &c;

Here, 5 is assigned to the c variable. And, the address of c is assigned to the pc pointer.

Get Value of Thing Pointed by Pointers

To get the value of the thing pointed by the pointers, we use the * operator. For example:

int* pc, c;
c = 5;
pc = &c;
printf("%d", *pc);   // Output: 5

Here, the address of c is assigned to the pc pointer. To get the value stored in that address, we used *pc.

Note: In the above example, pc is a pointer, not *pc. You cannot and should not do something like *pc = &c;

By the way, * is called the dereference operator (when working with pointers). It operates on a pointer and gives the value stored in that pointer.